Guantánamo’s refugees

10.2.09

The continued imprisonment of at least 61 prisoners at Guantánamo, who have been cleared for release after multiple military review boards (or, in recent months, after rulings in a US court), was an affront to notions of justice when the Bush administration was in power, and is even more so now that Barack Obama, who has pledged to close Guantánamo, is President.

Many of these prisoners have been cleared since 2006, and yet the majority of them are still held in conditions of profound isolation. At the very least, President Obama should be ensuring that all the prisoners are held in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, as he promised in a Presidential order on his second day in office, and that the cleared prisoners are held in Camp 4, away from the isolation blocks, where the fortunate few are allowed to live communally.

However, as I reported yesterday, with a mass hunger strike currently raging at the prison, and at least 42 of the remaining 242 prisoners being force-fed, severe doubts remain about the ability of defense secretary Robert Gates to ensure that Guantánamo conforms to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions within the deadline of a month that was established by the President.

European support for accepting Guantánamo prisoners

For the prisoners who have been cleared for release, there was, however, some good news last week, when, by an overwhelming majority of 542 votes to 55 (with 51 abstentions), the European Parliament passed a resolution on Guantánamo, which, as the BBC reported, “called for EU states to accept low-risk prisoners who cannot be sent home for fear they might be mistreated.”

Although there were dissenters — the right-wing German politician Harthmuth Nassauer, for example, claimed that many of the men “remain potential terrorists” — British MEP Graham Watson caught the general tone of the decision when he said, “Europe cannot stand back and shrug its shoulders and say these things are for America alone to sort out.” He stated that a crucial lesson to be learned from the Bush administration was that, “in the administration of international justice, the go-it-alone mentality ends in a cul-de-sac of failure,” and urged member states to recall that, although the Bush administration had led the way in the “War on Terror,” European countries also bore their share of the blame. “Too often member states from our union were complicit in what the Bush administration did,” he said.

Since Barack Obama was elected in November, the countries of Europe have struggled to present a coherent view on Guantánamo. In December — on the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — Portugal was the first country to state openly that it would accept some of the cleared prisoners, but other countries were slow to follow the Portuguese example.

However, with Barack Obama now installed in the White House, the European Parliament’s enthusiastic support for resettling Guantánamo prisoners may now yield some tangible results. On Saturday, in his first visit to Europe, Vice President Joe Biden said that it was “time to press the reset button and revisit the many areas where we can and should work together.” Using Guantánamo as an example, he stated, “As we seek a lasting framework for our common struggle against extremism, we will have to work cooperatively with other nations around the world — and we will need your help.”

In the last few days, media outlets throughout Europe and beyond have been buzzing with claims that European countries are now prepared to help out. On Friday, it was reported that the Spanish government had “expressed its willingness” to consider accepting prisoners “on a case-by-case basis within the context of a European Union consensus on the issue,” and that the Czech foreign minister had said that, “if the United States asked the EU to accept some Guantánamo prisoners, the Czech Republic would consider the request.”

Courting the Uighurs

Even more significantly, the municipal council of Munich indicated that it was backing a motion submitted by the Green Party to accept Guantánamo’s most famous cleared prisoners, 17 Uighurs (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province), who had fled to Afghanistan to escape persecution by the Chinese government. The Uighurs are unique in that they are the only prisoners who, through a resounding court victory last June, managed to persuade the Bush administration to drop its claim that they were “enemy combatants,” and their settlement in Munich would make sense, as the Bavarian city is home to the largest Uighur community outside of China.

Munich’s municipal council is acting unilaterally (with no guarantee that the German Chancellor will back the motion), but is not the only party interested in accepting the Uighurs. Last week the Associated Press reported that three of the Uighurs had applied for settlement in Canada, although the reporters also pointed out that previous attempts by the US to re-house the Uighurs in Canada had been unsuccessful. In February 2007, notes prepared for Peter MacKay, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, indicated that it was probable that they would be “inadmissible under Canadian immigration law.”

When the news about the Uighurs’ claim was announced last Tuesday, Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, the former chairman of the Canadian Senate’s national security and defense committee, stated that he supported the return to Canada of its only citizen in Guantánamo, Omar Khadr, a teenager at the time of his capture who has been repeatedly ignored by successive Canadian governments, but added that he had no interest in accepting any other prisoners. “Why should people clean up their dirty business?” Kenny asked, adding, “I don’t have much sympathy with the Americans for creating that prison.”

On Wednesday, however, it was revealed that Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (no relation) was contemplating whether to accept the Uighurs’ request, and was looking at the viability of issuing “temporary residence permits,” valid for up to three years, which would “allow the detainees to bypass the backlogged refugee process.”

These developments are a positive step for the Uighurs, of course, especially as countries willing to take the Uighurs risk a diplomatic rift with China by doing so. As the Canadian story surfaced last week, the Chinese foreign ministry made a point of issuing a statement about the Uighurs. Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Fu said, “As for those Chinese terror suspects that are kept in Guantánamo, as we have stated before, we strongly oppose any country accepting these people.”

Why the Uighurs are an American problem

Nevertheless, there are two problems with this focus on the Uighurs. Firstly, as I have made clear in previous articles, when Judge Ricardo Urbina reviewed their case in October (almost exactly four months ago), he ruled that their continued detention in Guantánamo was unconstitutional, and, because no other country had been found that was prepared to accept them, ordered them to be delivered to his courtroom so that he could make arrangements for them to be resettled in the United States, in the care of communities in Washington D.C. and Tallahassee, Florida, who had prepared detailed plans for their welfare and support.

The Bush administration shamelessly appealed, protesting that the men still posed a threat — even though it had conceded that they did not — and insisting that a District Court judge did not have the right to order their release into the United States. This too was also a false assertion, as Judge Judith W. Rogers, one of the appeal court judges explained in a dissenting opinion, when her colleagues approved the stay on Judge Urbina’s ruling that had been requested by the government. As a result, I believe that the obligation to re-house the Uighurs still rests with the US government, and I join with Sabin Willett, a lawyer for the Uighurs, who has spent long years publicizing their plight, in asking Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder to release them into the United States.

We urge the government to release the Uighurs immediately in the only place they can be released — the United States. Not only would this be just, but it is in our national interest. By accepting the Uighurs, we would encourage other countries to accept the significant number of Guantánamo detainees who are cleared for release but who cannot be repatriated. Bringing the Uighurs here is thus an important early step toward carrying out President Obama’s Executive Order and removing a stain on our National character.

The second problem with the widespread focus on the Uighurs is that it detracts from the cases of the other men held at Guantánamo who desperately need third countries to re-house them. Of the 44 cleared prisoners who are not Uighurs, 23 more men are currently seeking new homes. Three — of Palestinian origin — are essentially stateless, as it has proven impossible to negotiate their return with the Israeli authorities, and the other 20 — five Algerians, an Egyptian, a Libyan, a Tajik, eight Tunisians and four Uzbeks — cannot be repatriated because their safety cannot be guaranteed in their home countries. Last year, when two Tunisians were repatriated, these dangers were demonstrated with an alarming clarity. On their return, despite an agreement with the US government that they would be treated fairly, the two men were subjected to show trials based on evidence extracted through the torture of another prisoner, and given jail sentences of three and seven years.

It is clear that none of the cleared prisoners poses a threat to anyone, for the simple reason that, in a prison based on the presumption of guilt — in which everyone has been held as an “enemy combatant” without rights, solely because the President said they were — those who have been approved for release, after multiple military reviews, have only succeeded in doing so because the authorities have concluded that they do not pose any danger to the United States or its allies.

So who are these other men?

There is not the space here to discuss all their stories, but they include Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian who fled persecution by Islamists and came to the UK, where he settled in the seaside town of Bournemouth, and received a tip and a thank-you note from Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister, after cleaning his room during a political conference. Ahmed’s only mistakes were to take a holiday in Pakistan in the fall of 2001, and to do so before his asylum application was complete.

Another is Nabil Hadjarab, a young Algerian from a broken home, with relatives in Lyon, who was only persuaded to travel to Afghanistan because he was caught in limbo between Algeria and France as his family disintegrated around him, and another is Rafiq al-Hami, a 39-year old Tunisian who had lived in Germany, where he had worked in restaurants and for a Turkish cleaning company. Seized randomly in Pakistan, far from the battlefields of Afghanistan, al-Rami was nevertheless sent to the CIA’s notorious “Dark Prison” near Kabul, which resembled a medieval torture dungeon, but with the addition of painfully loud music, blasted into the cells 24 hours a day.

Then there are seven Tunisians, who were all Italian residents. I covered the stories of five of these men last year, and one of them, to give just one example, is Adel al-Hakeemy, who had lived in Italy for eight years, working as a chef’s assistant in several hotels in Bologna, before traveling to Pakistan to get married. “I lived with Italians in their homes,” he explained to his lawyers. “I am used to their culture. The Italians worked alongside me, they respected me, they treated me as their brother.”

While these prisoners already have connections with specific European countries, others, like the Libyan Abdul Rauf al-Qassim, do not. Cleared since 2006, al-Qassim — essentially a refugee from Libya who married an Afghan woman and had a daughter he has not seen since she was a baby — was also seized in Pakistan at a time when bounty payments for “terror suspects” were widespread, and foreign Arabs were easy prey, and he has been fighting in the US courts to prevent his repatriation for nearly two years.

Another is Adel Fattough Ali El-Gazzar, an accountant and a former officer in the Egyptian army, who had traveled to the Pakistani border to provide humanitarian aid to Afghan refugees, but was caught in a US bombing raid. “I saw a light and heard a voice and then I lost consciousness,” he explained in Guantánamo. “When I woke up I was in a Pakistani hospital. I lost my coat, my passport, my money, everything. And I lost my leg also.”

Then there are the Palestinians: Ayman al-Shurafa, a student whose education in Gaza was disrupted by the Intifada, who was persuaded to travel to Afghanistan for jihad, but who regretted his decision and never raised arms against anybody; Assem Matruq al-Aasmi, another duped young recruit, who was wounded by a grenade; and Mahar al-Quwari, an older man, with a wife and children, who had drifted to Afghanistan in search of work after a fruitless trip to visit the UN in Pakistan, to sort out papers for his family, but who ended up being sold by Afghan villagers to the Northern Alliance, who in turn sold him to the Americans.

Completing this brief guide to the cleared prisoners are the Uzbeks, whose government’s human rights abuses are notorious: Shakrukh Hamiduva, just 18 years old at the time of his capture, who was working as a taxi driver in Afghanistan when he was seized by Afghan bounty hunters; Ali Sher Hamidullah, a drifter who explained in Guantánamo that the Uzbek intelligence agents who visited him told him that “the only thing that waits for me in Uzbekistan is a bullet in my head”; Kamalludin Kasimbekov, who had been forcibly recruited to join the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, allies of the Taliban; and Oybek Jabbarov, a 30-year old father of two, who suffers from health problems related to a botched surgical procedure on a ruptured disk in his back in 2007.

Unwillingly transplanted to Afghanistan along with fighters from the IMU, Jabbarov explained in Guantánamo that he made a living “buying and selling sheep, chicken and goats,” and was told in December 2001 that the government was giving out ID cards to immigrants at Bagram airbase. “There, I saw American soldiers,” he said. “They just took me inside, they questioned me, and they kept me for a few days. I’ve been detained ever since.”

His lawyer, Michael Mone, who recently explained that he had taken on Jabbarov’s case because “I felt I could no longer stand on the sidelines and permit this gross executive power grab, which is how I view [Bush’s] actions as they relate to torture, rendition, and the creation of Guantánamo as this [legal] black hole,” stated that his client had also been threatened by Uzbek intelligence agents. “They at one point showed him a photo array and asked him if he could identify any of the individuals,” Mone said in a recent interview. “And when he couldn’t identify any of them, one of the Uzbeks banged his fist on the table and said, ‘When you get back to Uzbekistan, you will know these things.’ And Oybek took that to mean that when he got back to Uzbekistan, they would torture him until he told them what they wanted to hear.”

I leave the final word to Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who has not always been a voice of reason when it comes to assessing the threat posed by terrorism, but who, on this occasion, captured a truth to which governments — including the US government — should pay close attention. As reported in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Garzon said, “We have to confront the reality that some bad people will end up walking the streets, like the former rapists, robbers and terrorists whom we have walking the streets once they complete their sentence and are released. We have to take the risks that are necessary in a democratic society.”

The alternative, lest we forget, is Guantánamo, as conceived by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, a place where, ideally, everyone is presumed guilty, no one is ever charged or tried, and no one is ever released.

Note: For those who are keeping count, the other 21 cleared prisoners are not apparently in immediate need of the assistance of third countries. Six are Saudis, whose release should be straightforward, as the Saudi government has run a successful rehabilitation program and has processed 109 returned prisoners in the last two years (with a low rate of recidivism, contrary to recent reports), twelve are Yemenis (and there are hopes that the long diplomatic impasse between the US and Yemeni governments will soon be resolved, so that they can be repatriated), and the release of the other three — two Bosnians of Algerian origin, and Mohammed El-Gharani, a resident of Chad — was ordered by District Court Judge Richard Leon, when he recently ruled, in their habeas corpus reviews, that the government had failed to establish a case against them.

Additional note: Oybek Jabbarov is known to the Pentagon as Abu Bakir Jamaludinovich. For the story of the Tajik prisoner, Omar Abdulayev, see The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras 9 – Seized in Pakistan (Part One). In addition, one of the Saudis cleared for release is the British resident Shaker Aamer, profiled here, and one of the other Tunisians is Lotfi bin Ali (known to the Pentagon as Mohammed Abdul Rahman), whose struggle to prevent his forcible return to Tunisia is described here.

14 Responses

Well, the last post and this do not present a very promising picture of how things are going under the charge of my college classmate, President Obama.

I cannot underestimate how disheartened I was by the position taken yesterday in court by Attorney General Holder’s “new” Justice Department purporting to adopt the “state secrets” position taken by the Ashcroft/Gonzales/Mukasey Justice Dept. with respect to the case of Binyam Mohammed’s case against the Boeiing subsidiary responsible for being the travel agent for his rendition flight to hell (more here: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/02/09/obama-continues-bush-policy-on-state-secrets/)

The only word for this position is: inexcusable. In one fell swoop, the Obama Adminstration undermines its claims to transparency, a commitment to end torture, and to hold those to account who may be guilty of wrongdoing. Unfortunately, I fear this does not hold much promise for how an Obama Administration will deal with matters GTMO… the courts may end up having to do most of the heavy lifting after all. We can only hope they are up to it.

Hey TD,
No, I’m struggling to cope with a less than gloomy explanation, although I do have one — or two.
With Guantanamo, I fear that, despite good intentions, a raging mass hunger strike is too much for them to cope with. Bold, bold action is required, but unless Obama’s new commander turns up very soon with a potent new broom (the military will, after all, follow orders), the entire place is stuck on violent autopilot. I fear that someone will die, and the ripples from that will be disturbing …
As for Jeppesen (and Binyam), I’m not actually surprised, as they no doubt have legions of compromised officials and operatives breathing down their necks and talking, through gritted teeth, about criminal liability (much as Miliband is doing in the UK in Binyam’s case).
Where it gets difficult, of course, is in perceiving how, in the long term, if Holder is honest about his pledge to “remake the Justice Department into what it was and what it must always be,” he and Obama can outlaw the crimes of the Bush administration but not pursue the criminals.
After all, Binyam’s case — and the Jeppesen suit — are just a handful out of the hundreds (at least) of other cases of “America’s Disappeared” — the other victims of extraordinary rendition” and torture who are either known about but unaccounted for, or completely unknown.
I confess that I don’t have any answers, but I will be digging out my research on “ghost prisoners” and hoping I have time to pursue it. If they won’t give in easily, then we have to shame them into it.
Best,
Andy

I fully understand the pressures they were under with the Jeppeson case; but the appropriate response would have been a delay — pretty much what they did with GTMO… “a time for review” or “reconsideration of policy” or whatever. Instead, they were pretty definitive about just adopting the company line. It also troubles me because Obama took the “centrist”/corporatist position on wire-tapping (until it became a presidential campaign issue not to) and now takes it on rendition. He can be “pragmatic” on deciding whether Bush, Cheney, Addington and Yoo, et al. go in the dock; pragmatism on continuing the policies he ran against is not acceptable. Those have to end, and compromising on that… is not good.

I actually find that Obama’s meeting with 9-11 and Cole bombing surviving family members, where he actually promised to consider keeping the commissions in place (to demonstrate America’s propensity for collective punishment and revenge) and said the only reason he wanted to close GTMO was because it made us look bad in other countries (rather than “because we owe your departed loved ones JUSTICE and not some lame excuse for a revenge fantasy concocted by the last Administration) actually troubles me more.

Well… what can I tell you! The perfect is the enemy of the good, Barack keeps saying. But I’d sure as hell like to see “the good” be anything more than just rhetorical flourish.

It’s a matter of focus, which is why at the suggestion of Cage Prisoners in the UK, whom I spoke with first, I contacted Frida Berrigan at Witness Against Torture in the US and offered myself up as a solidarity hunger striker, an offer that stands. There is not much that I wouldn’t do to help pull the focus from all the competing and important issues out there to this one, which for me is the essential issue of the moment.

When you think of it, this is probably the least, or one of the least, complicated issues President Obama has on his to-do list. We know, I mean really know, how to do justice well in this country. It’s one of the things we do best, or at least did do best, before the Bush administrations. There are countless examples of excellence. We have wonderful organizations chock full of brilliant lawyers, such as CCR, Brennan Center for Justice, The Innocence Project, and the ACLU. Each of these can claim the gold standard in securing justice for prisoners whose rights have been trounced upon and violated in every possible way. Let’s get them at the table TODAY to devise a plan we can all have confidence in, with a timetable, and intermediate measures (such as communal living for the prisoners until we reach ultimate resolution, as Andy has suggested).

Honestly, with available technology, that meeting could be set up in an hour. It could be held by tele/video conference, and with three, maybe four hours of dedicated resources, time and attention, we could agree upon our list of next steps. Then we could go to the strikers themselves with the required proofs and ask them to stand down from their battle. Then we wouldn’t have to ask doctors and soldiers, many of whom are as compassionate as the most gentle and idealist among us, to do horrible things, like shoving tubes up fellow human beings’ noses.

I truly believe that we cannot bear another tragic outcome in Guantanamo. One more single death would be a stain and a taint on the aspirations (so many wishes are coming true!) we hold for the Obama presidency, a scarring mark of shame that we would not easily, or perhaps ever, be able to rinse away.

Nation! (as Mr. Colbert likes to say), it’s a couple of calls, a few e-mails, some text messages, some Twitter feeds, some RSS streaming, a sit-down, a good facilitator, throw in a PowerPoint presentation if you want, refreshments are optional, and it’s done. I mean it. That’s all it takes. That, and a shred of decency. I think that, too, is something we have, individually and collectively, in ample supply.

I love my country. I love the people charged with running it. I love the reformers who pursue justice above all other pursuits. These are not separate categories.

[…] for over four years, have been through review processes that, however inadequate, have at least cleared some of them for release, and in recent months have, in a few cases, been ordered to be freed by U.S. […]

[…] answer back. Over the last year or so, I have done my best to profile some of these men: those “approved for transfer” from Guantánamo after multiple military review boards (many of whom are now having their cases […]

[…] certainly encourage European countries to accept some of the other prisoners at Guantánamo who cannot be repatriated (because they too are from regimes with bleak human rights records, including Algeria, Libya, […]

[…] by unscrupulous politicians, and has also hindered efforts to persuade European countries to accept other prisoners cleared for release, who, like the Uighurs, cannot be repatriated because of a risk of […]

[…] 20 of these men — five Algerians, an Egyptian, a Libyan, eight Tunisians, four Uzbeks and Umar Abdulayev, who was cleared for release under George W. Bush before this decision was repeated by Obama’s Task Force — could not be repatriated by the Bush administration because of fears that they would be tortured on their return, and three are Palestinians, and are therefore effectively stateless, as the Israeli government has no desire to facilitate their return. […]

[…] two unidentified prisoners — presumed to be Uzbeks — to new homes in Ireland. I suspected that one of the men was Oybek Jabbarov, an Uzbek who was cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2007, but who could not be repatriated […]

[…] for over four years, have been through review processes that, however inadequate, have at least cleared some of them for release, and in recent months have, in a few cases, been ordered to be freed by US […]

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Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo, co-director, We Stand With Shaker. Also, singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers) and photographer. Email Andy Worthington